Sunset
by TheMacUnleashed
Summary: Neither of them were supposed to have fallen in love, but one did. Now what? A series of oneshots focusing around Ahsoka after her feelings for Anakin pass into the forbidden. One-sided Ahsoka/Anakin. Chapter Two: Sun.
1. Prologue: If Anyone Falls

**Prologue:**

** If anyone falls:**

Even when she joked and laughed with her female age-mates, talked about all of their more masculine classmates, Ahsoka had never wanted to seriously fall in love. It was a disability for a Jedi to do so, she knew, though many had infamously done it: She wasn't sure about Anakin, but rumours frequently surfaced involving Obi-Wan, Aayla Secura and Kit Fisto, Quinlan Vos, even Mace Windu.

She wasn't sure if that lack of desire had prolonged anything, though, because as she watched Anakin talk to one of the Clones, watched him crack some joke she couldn't hear, she realized -a gradual falling, probably, but to her if felt like suddenly and unexpectedly being dipped in carbonite- she just might be in love.

Why? Why now did attraction stir within her? And in the middle of a war, of all places! Completely inappropriate.

But it couldn't be helped, as much as she tried. She heard his voice, and her heart leapt. She tried to spar with him, and yet she kept getting distracted by him. She acted normally enough, repressing her feelings in the Jedi way, but every day when she woke up, she wondered if she could wear that front again.

This was not right, by any means. He was too old. She was not mature enough. It was, simply and purely, _wrong_. Through all of this, she was holding that small nugget of knowledge close inside, but it wasn't helping.

In her heart, though, she was trying to be older and more mature, being everything that she was supposed to. And if that wasn't enough, she would make it be.

She would have to. Neither of them was supposed to have fallen in love with the other, but one had.

Now what?

_if anyone falls in love  
It will be one of us_

_-Stevie Nicks_

_

* * *

a/n: This is sort of a piece parallel to _"Midnight," _one of my previous stories. Like that one, it does deal with the onesided Anakin/Ahsoka pairing (note _**onesided**_; Anakin will in no way be sharing her feelings) but it spins off in that the ending will be different from that story. _

_As this is an almost illicit pairing to be writing, seeing as there is a gap in both age and maturity in them, I will be doing my best to deal with it accordingly. I plan to keep the chapters to the 'T' rating; however, if anyone is uncomfortable with this, please notify me, and I will willingly move it up. _

_This came to be from a review to _"Midnight" _about how Ahsoka's motives for liking Anakin weren't too detailed. This is my attempt to work out why she would like him._

_ The story does jump around in time a bit -the prologue actually takes place after the first chapter- but I'll note when these take place._

_As a closing note, I'm getting most of my inspiration to write these oneshots from different songs, so if anyone has any recommendations, I'd love to hear them!  
_


	2. I: Rain

It had been raining for days on the gloomy planet of Cagarn, and it was driving Ahsoka mad. Her Togruta instincts were all very clear as to the fact that this was not right: Shili's climate was not one of extremes, mostly temperate, with the rainy days balanced into the sunny ones. She had been raised in the Temple, true, but her basic instincts and senses were all ingrained deep into her psych, to the point where the environment she was raised in could do little in taming them out of her.

Unfortunately, it did work the opposite way around: The environment around her, whether it be as dry as a desert or as moist and fertile as Felucia, was talented at bringing out the Togruta and overcoming the Jedi within her, to tell her that something was very wrong with the current climate.

It had been a long day already -the droid troops that they were currently tracking hadn't moved at all, and all the clones she and Anakin had been assigned to work with were dutiful, by-the-book men, not at all like the friendly teachers Rex and his men were. The rain, though, was seriously starting to push her over the top, and so with a grunt she jumped off the bed she had been curled on while trying to meditate, and decided to go find her Master, which probably wouldn't be too hard a task in a base as small as the mobile one that they were presently in.

Ahsoka's assumption about it being simple to find Anakin was soon proved correct. He was in his private quarters when she knocked on the door, presumably reading battle reports, judging by the numerous files and data-chips scattered over the table in the center when he answered the door. "Hey, Snips. Come on in." He treated her like an adult, a fact for which she was thankful for: his direct approach was far less awkward than Master Kenobi's were; she knew he would have asked how her meditations had gone, or worse, what she was doing up at this late hour.

After she had taken a seat perpendicular from him at the cluttered table Anakin asked, "So what's on your mind?"

She knew she could be open around him. "The rain." Even now, she could hear its steady plunking on the top of the tent, and it was annoying her to no end. "I hate it."

Anakin snorted, "Let me guess. This is because you're a Togruta."

That surprised her; they rarely discussed the deviation in species between them. "How did you know?"

"Because no normal Human would ever consider rain to be an issue. At least by my standards, they wouldn't." He smirked, before growing serious. "Look, Snips, you know I didn't exactly grow up in the Temple."

"Yes, Master." That was common knowledge amongst the Jedi.

"Well, I grow up on Tatooine –come to think of it, I mentioned that to you once or twice when we were forced to go back to that hellhole to rescue Jabaa's son. And, as you know, it's a very dry place, Tatooine."

That was an understatement. "I think I still have sand in areas I'd rather not think about."

He laughed, both bitter and humourous a sound. "Don't we all. Anyway, it was so dry there that when it rained, it was a huge event. Everyone would be outside, dancing and partying and drinking water as soon as it fell from the skies –it was weird, I guess, by galactic standards, but it was darn well normal there. Rain was to be appreciated and celebrated, even; that's what I was taught. How can I just turn my back on that?"

It was the most she had ever heard him say, and it made her realize that she'd gladly listen to more about that strange place he had grown up in –more, she wanted to know, to understand him. "I guess you're right, Master. I never thought about it that way before. Thanks." She stood up, faked a yawn. "I'd better go to bed. Don't want to be too tired if these droids ever start to move!"

She walked alone in the swirling rain, which now seemed somehow lovely to her. There was a lot on her mind, but surely she could take a moment to appreciate the weather.


	3. II: Sun

The sun shines hot and unyielding over the battlefield. Ahsoka gradually becomes aware of it again: she acknowledged it in the first hellish hour on the surface of this planet with the unpronounceable name; gave herself that long to grit her teeth and swear as drops of sweat beaded beneath her headdress and slid into her eyes, and then she fell silent because that was when she was separated from Anakin, and that was when the dance began.

That's the easiest way to describe it when she fights against an organic, sentient enemy. Droids are silent and unyielding. They come at you in waves with blasters in their hands and battles programmed into their heads. When one of them falls, circuitry burned or sliced through, they move on without thinking about it.

It's different when you're against a living enemy, even a hive-minded people like the J'arzi. There's something ancient about that fight; blood against blood, with a pre-written agreement saying that at least one of them will die. It's a battle that's been fought, Ahsoka imagines, since the first planet bore the first species. Now the enemies have no common ancestor, and only one of them (the species she just fought against; the ones that were relentless in their attack and came at her as if wires running through their lithe bodies were telling them not to stop and see if their friends were okay; that kept coming at her even after she had disarmed them, and then after she had literally taken their limbs and tried her best to preserve their lives) is native to this rocky surface.

The concept is the same, though. The dance hasn't changed; it never will.

It is over, though, and that's because the J'arzi really are enough like droids for her to pretend that they are, as much as she hates having to reduce their lives to that. They're emotionless, one-mind-fits-all: "They behave exactly like Jedi are supposed to," Anakin had remarked wryly while they were in hyperspace.

"Exactly like you don't?" she had replied, and he had laughed like she had said something witty and called her Snips, and she hadn't shown how much that small show of affection, however platonic it was intended to be, meant to her.

Ahsoka forces herself to end the reminiscing and stagger onwards. They're like droids because if you take out the command center, they go down. Just... stop. Freeze. And then they do what no droids she's encountered ever have, and they turn around and leap into the air and fly back to wherever they came from without saying anything. It was one of the oddest sights she's ever seen; the reddish sunlight being blocked by hundreds, maybe thousands of figures in the air. Nobody spoke, not even the troopers she and Anakin had come with. The only sound had been the metallic buzz wings in the air. It had seemed sacred, somehow, and it hadn't seemed _right_ to break the near-silence.

Rex had been the one to, actually, contacting her and asking if she could reach General Skywalker, and then sounding grim as he informed her that he couldn't, either.

He'd asked her if she was hurt as well, but she had insisted that she was fine, and she was, more or less. As soon as she realized that Anakin was out of reach, even if he had succeeded (and he must have, since the J'arzi stopped and left and that meant that he'd killed their leader, right?) the blaster burn on her arm had numbed and the dryness in her mouth had stopped being quite so intense.

She's been walking for almost an hour (no landspeeder to take; she insisted that Rex use the still-functioning ones to transport the injured men, because she knew that Anakin would take each of their deaths personally, and even if he's in danger, this is a better way to ease his pain, because he's going to be alright, and it's best that she thinks to the future and save him from what pain she can) and she sees it now, the ruins of the fortress where the J'arzi king kept his quarters or nest or whatnot.

For a moment the numbness that's been over her ever since the battle ended disappears and the Force flows through her. It spreads energy through her blood and into her bones, and for a moment she can run, and she does.

Ahsoka stops when she comes to the start of the fortress, tired and out of breath. More importantly, though, she can't focus while running, and she needs to concentrate to the best of her ability. She _stretches_, reaching out her mind for her Master. The Force is sluggish, but it's there, like it always is, reassuring even now, when everything seems to be against her.

Anakin burns brightly in the Force on the best of days, and even now, when it's close to the worst, he still stands out like a lightsaber among the older metal-swords. She focuses and follows, and, within ten minutes, she finds.

"Master!" He's not quite unconscious, but not fully aware either, and he's trapped beneath a chunk of what was probably once a wall.

Emotion gives her power and the fear that she feels as soon as she sees him lying there, even though logic tells her that he's still alive, is enough for her to lift the wall with her mind and shove it over several meters from him, before letting gravity take over from her.

"Master," she gasps again, and then she collapses besides him, activating her com-link's emergency signal. Rex will track it, find them. He's done that before. She can count on him.

"Ahsoka?" Anakin says, coughing.

"'M here," she mutters back with the last of her strength, and for a few minutes there's only her and Anakin lying side-by-side under the pounding, furious sun.


End file.
